In my earlier Pat. Nos. 3,679,085 of July 25, 1972, and 3,722,727 of Mar. 27, 1973, I disclosed a so-called "Child-Proof" closure or cap for medicine bottles or the like having an inner threaded cap which screws onto the neck of the bottle and an outer over-cap or driver. The inner cap and driver were nested together one over the other. In the disclosure of both of the above patents the cap and the driver have one-way driving means for screwing the cap onto the bottle neck and they have second co-operating driving means for unscrewing the cap off of the neck of the bottle. The second one-way engagable driving means is made operable only when a portion of the wall of the driver is inwardly displaced to engage a co-operating abutment or recess on the outer wall of the inner cap. The closures are thus relatively child-proof because a small child cannot comprehend the requirement for engaging the second driving means and, if the child rotates the outer cap or driver in an unscrewing direction, it merely rotates relative to the inner cap without unscrewing the inner cap.
The closures of the two above patents are entirely satisfactory from the standpoint of rendering the closures child-resistant or child-proof, i.e., being significantly difficult to be opened by a child of the age of, say, six years or less. Equally important, closures embodying the two above listed patents readily can be opened by older children or by adults.
However, there is an additional problem with respect to prepackaged medicines such as aspirin, cold tablets and the like, even when they are packaged in bottles upon which the closures of the two above patents have been placed. There is no way of preventing an adult or an older child from opening the package while it is on the shelf in a large drugstore or super market, either to sample the contents or to switch the cap of this type upon which a certain price has been stamped for a cap of another product upon which a lower price has been stamped. Cap switching in large stores, where the clerks cannot maintain observation of all of the customers, has become a serious problem because the check-out operators are unable to check the label on the bottle against the price on the cap to make sure that the caps have not been switched.
It is, therefore, the principal object of the instant invention to provide a child-resistant cap of the type disclosed in the above mentioned patents but also comprising a tamper indicating feature making it readily apparent to a check-out clerk that the cap has been tampered with or switched by the customer.
A more specific object of the instant invention is to provide a tamper-indicating, child-resistant cap for a medicine bottle, or the like, having a threaded neck in which the cap comprises two nested elements with co-operating one-way drive means requiring that a portion of the outer element or driver be displaced inwardly to engage the inner element or bottle cap in order to unscrew the cap and initially having means for preventing that engage ment without removal of a portion of the outer driver to permit the engagement of the one way drive means, the removal of that outer portion being readily visible to a clerk at a check-out counter of a market or pharmacy.